Marcin Zabielski

Co-founder and Partner

I have more than 20 years of diverse, professional experience and it is one of major factors shaping both my current job attitude and its quality.

I quickly decided that having diverse experiences will allow me advising others in reshaping their businesses. Therefore at the beginning of my career I aimed at getting broad management experience in diverse market sectors incl.: FMCG, Banking, Insurance, Transportation, Telecoms and Pharmaceuticals in Poland and UK. I used to be a business consultant with experience at active engagements for my clients, which required professional knowledge of strategic management, restructuring, lean management, cost cutting as well as typical business development (PepsiCo Foods and Arthur Andersen).

After a few years I realized there is this so-called New Economy, changing the face of the business and I was fascinated by it. So I left business consulting and became an entrepreneur developing online auctions (Vatera) in: Poland, Hungary, Czech Rep. and Greece. Unfortunately, the First Internet Bubble failure curbed my appetite of becoming the Polish Jeff Bezos while my startup mainly failed, with only one country having a positive exit.

But this adventure did not curb my love for Internet businesses. I became a business consultant again trying to use my prior experiences in restructuring portfolios of Internet and technological businesses in big, blue-chip companies (Elektrim, Orange).

When an opportunity appeared of becoming a part of Grupa Pracuj – the rapidly growing leader of online recruitment in Poland and Ukraine – I did not hesitate and took this engagement. So I observed the growth of this company from a startup employing 50 people to mature business with 750 employees and current valuation of approx. USD 400 m. Being a part of Board of Directors my assignments there concerned holistic approach to: strategy creation, execution of new projects and revenue streams.

After Pracuj became successful company, together with my partners and more than 20 other business angels we set up Hedgehog Fund – a seed and early-stage VC with myself as Managing Partner. Hedgehog Fund invested in 12 companies (10 in Poland and 2 abroad) and with smart-money attitude we became recognized as a very entrepreneur-oriented, helpful and friendly VC in Poland. When the investment period of Hedgehog Fund ended in Q4 2016 I have decided to continue my venture capital journey creating Market One Capital with my friends from Protos VC.

I am passionate about all human aspects of the business, and truly believing in the power of the team. I love coaching people, giving a n outlet to the teacher in me. I am also a metric-driven and process-oriented person loving setting up goals and helping entrepreneurs to achieve them. I support startups in our portfolio mainly with business strategy and models, team building and management as well as process creation or restructuring. I am also a person responsible for investor relations.